


unholy delights

by ludling



Series: a long dark table set for two [1]
Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Incest, Self-Harm, because here u go, because im going to hell, but happy endings, did someone say, self-indulgent af, straight to hell with this one lads
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-09
Updated: 2018-11-12
Packaged: 2019-08-20 17:13:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16559897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ludling/pseuds/ludling
Summary: Hilda moves out, Zelda receives an offer and Sabrina's just so pissed at both of them.





	1. one

**Author's Note:**

> Don't know how this happened. Welcome to my completley self indulgent fic lads. No spellcheck cause I am on a computer in the glorious land of Norway. So no reading to closely into spelling, grammar, etc etc. please and thank you

It's the baby's insistent cries that wake her. 

Zelda keeps her eyes shut a minute longer. Faustus' child is loud of course. Loud and demanding and hungry for life since the second she drew breath.

Blindly she reaches one arm out of the warmth of her quilt, reaching for the edge of her sisters bed, knowing that she can make Hilda get up, sweet, gullible Hilda abhores the sound of suffering-

And finds nothing.

 _Ah_. Of course. Hilda's newfound independence.  

She sits up, exposing the whole of her lacy neglige to the November chill. ' _Why'do always wear those?_ ' Hilda had asked once, laughing, in Sabrina's early days, early on in their sharing a bedroom for the first time since they were children. Zelda had rolled her eyes then and she rolls them now, throwing on her matching emerald robe, and shoving her feet into her silk house slippers. Of course Hilda had asked  _that_  of all things. Hilda who wore loose, vibrant nightgowns, the only thing left over from her awful sixties idealism. Hilda who'd never had a man look at her for longer than a second.

The baby quiets as soon as it's pressed against her chest. They like heartbeats Zelda's found. Most creatures do.

"Hush now" She says sternly, looking down into the wrinkled face resting against her breast. The child would need a name soon. She's never been particularly good at that end of the business. Hilda was the one who'd learnt to cut toast into stars, who kissed Sabrina's skinned knees and learned the names of all of her stuffed toys. Zelda was just there to be an audience for the two of them, a person who said  _absoloutley not_  to summer camps, and a witch who had always managed to protect them when danger called.

She wonders if she let the child cry long enough one night if Hilda might not reconsider. The thought's a useless one. Hilda has made it quite clear that she's happy in the spare room. Happier than she's been in years. She's even moved her secret trunk of romance novels in there. As if Zelda hasn't known about those the last sixteen years.

At least the child has fallen asleep again. Zelda sets her down carefully in Sabrina's old bassinet, then creeps back to bed. 

Even though quiet has returned to her room, Zelda lies in bed looking into the dark. She almost wishes the baby had kept crying. That would have given her someone to talk to.

***

The Spellman house these days is awfully empty.

When not at the Academy, Sabrina spends most of her time with the Weird Sisters and that annoying teacher of hers. Private tutalage or some rubbish. Not so long ago Zelda would have had something to say about _that_ , but the child takes so much energy, and Sabrina, white-haired and beautiful has finally come into her own.  They're more careful around each other after the disasterous last few months. But Sabrina will come to her if there's a real problem. That much at least she's sure of finally. 

Ambrose is there to prep the bodies and not much else. She can't blame him really. Even the small modicum of freedom Faustus has granted him must feel like a paradise after centuries of house arrest. His remaining hours spent with his lover in his room are not really something she wants a part of, even if the boyfriend has offered.

And then there's Hilda. 

Hilda, who used to be as dependable and everpresent as air, is now someone Zelda only catches an occassional glimpse of. She spends most her hours at that ridicolous bookshop, serving mortals of all despicable beings, and dressing like a cheap imitation of a lower creature from  _The Book of Demons_. She comes home at odd hours, not just smelling of coffee and humming tedious melodies, but, worst of all,locking herself in her dingy little room for hours on end. Zelda knocks only once the third evening, wondering if all their traditions are going to go the way of the dodo, and is greeted by a bathrobe-clad Hilda, hair still wet from the shower and strangely flushed. She holds a phone in her hand and the receiver is wedged between her neck and her cheek. Zelda can hear a man's voice saying 'Hello? Hellooo? You still there Hilly?'

 _Hilly_ , Zelda thinks for the thousandth time, restitching the Y-section on this weeks job, a bit more viscously than needed. The morgue is a mess. She'll have to speak to Ambrose about priorities. He might be all high and mighty at the Academy these days, but he can still pick up a mop. 

Upstairs the doorbell rings. 

Zelda magics the blood away with a flick. Touching a little splinter she pried from the crib, she listens carefully, until her hearing detects the child's even breaths. Asleep. _Good_.

Father Blackwood is already in the living room, tapping his cane lightly against his foot. For a moment she panics.  _He knows. Satan, he knows I stole his daughter. This will be the final shame I've brought on this family. He'll end our line-_

But then he reaches forward and cups her face. One long nail slips between her lips.  _Ah_ , Zelda thinks. This she can handle. She bites down on the digit and watches his adams apple bob.  _Yes_ , she thinks,  _I can do this, and what a relief_. She presses herself forward, already warming to the idea of the bulk of him, the forgetting, the pain-

"Sister Zelda" 

She looks up, confused. Faustus is looking down at her, frowning. "I am in mourning" He withdraws his thumb from her mouth. It comes away wet and reddened. She licks her lips. Blinks.

"How may I be of service then Father?" 

" You rendered me a great service on the safe delivery of my son"

"Satan be praised" She answers wondering where he's going with this. "How is he faring?"

"Well" Faustus smiles, obviously full of pride "But I fear the infernal nurseries aren't enough for a boy of his... lineage"

"The infernal nurses have raised many a fine Hell-wishing child" Zelda answers promptly. She'd spent many blissful afternoons there herself as a little one. "And why wouldn't they only have him during the day, when you're occupied at the Academy?"

Faustus steers her over to the couch, then sits them both down. She notes absently that he is stroking her arm. It was easier when they just did their pennance together. The flick of unholy pain on her back had let her forget everything - Sabrina's disobedience, her sister's excommunication, the troubling business with the mine collapse- of course Hilda just had to ruin that too. She'd rubbed salve so gently into the cuts that Zelda wishes she'd never inflicted them on herself in the first place.

"Boys need a woman's touch. A mother to show them the ideal witch some would say. I think you are that woman Zelda."

She emerges from her thoughts and stares at him. Her high priest, her direct link to the Dark Lord on Earth-

"Are you asking me to marry you?"

***

She's still rooted to the couch when the front door swings open hours later.

It's dark, so Hilda doesn't see her in the parlour. She's dressed in white with that ugly wig. But she isn't humming. Zelda didn't know what a relief that would be until it happens. In fact Hilda looks...weary. She casts a glance up the staircase, frowning slightly, and pulls off her tunic. She's wearing a yellow dress underneath. Zelda wishes for a moment that they could call a time out so she could bury her head near the dip of Hilda's sweetheart neckline and just hide there forever.

Zelda listens to her sister rummage around the kitchen. She hears the whistle of the kettle, the clatter of cutlery on porcelain, and finally the hum of the refrigerator. It's only when she sees Hilda, balancing a cup of tea, a sandwich and a stack of new books, begin up the stairs, does she clear her throat. 

Hilda nearly drops everything. She catches the books and the bread at the last minute, but spills tea all down her front. She squeaks several choice words that Zelda didn't know were in her vocabulary. 

"What in Satan's green earth are you doing there sitting in the dark like a ghost?"

Zelda doesn't dignify that with an answer. Hilda's shoved the books, her cup and her plate on a sidetable and is furiously mopping up the tea from her chest. The skin over her neckline has gone a splotchy red. Zelda can't stop looking at it.

"Well?"

Zelda looks up into Hilda's thunderously frowning face. If someone had told her a few weeks ago that her sister would be able to maintain a modicum of personal space for longer than twelve hours she would have laughed. She clears her throat.

 _Hilly_.

"It's nothing. Goodnight Hilda"

 ***

 

She'd told Faustus she'd need time to decide. There was Sabrina to think of after all. And Ambrose. And the business.  _And his baby daughter that he doesn't know exists_.

And Hilda.

When they were younger, Edward and her used to play a game. They graduated from rubbing against each other, to awkward fumblings, to sharp exploration in nearly no time at all. He was the one she could trust, the one who introduced her to so many wicked ways of enjoying one self. Her years at the Academy wouldn't have been half as fun without the upper hand her brother gave her. And it was always a game between them to find a new technique to shock the other.

Hilda had caught them once very early on. She hadn't understood what they were doing, but she'd told their parents in floods of tears anyway.

Thank Satan, Mother and Father set her right. Edward and Zelda were in their full rights to explore. Only the false god taught the other nonesense. Sure they could never marry, and Mother had a sharp word with her about casting off unwanted children, but it was another way for them to be with each other.

Zelda had adored her brother with her whole being. Edward Spellman was more than the rest of them. Shining with hell-fire itself nearly.

Then he'd died.

Well, no that wasn't quite right, first he'd fallen in love with a mortal, and if Zelda was honest that still stung a little all these years later. Somehow, through all the centuries, and all their dalliances, she'd always assumed it would be him and her,  _Z + E,_  at the end of it all.

But still, he'd given them Sabrina, and for a time she had thought that was enough. Zelda doesn't think she ever realised how content she was in those early years, until she examines them as memories. All the days seem mist-shrouded, Sabrina seems to always be smiling and Hilda only needed murdering every other month.

Still, Hilda's face when she caught them, young and clumsy, keeps  _interupting_  her later memories. It's the only other time Zelda can recall her being this set about something. And holding on to the mood too.

 

***

 

She's drinking her morning black coffee, smoking her second cigarette, and reading an indepentent anarchist rag, published bi-monthly in Xi'an when Sabrina storms in. 

Like always, Zelda braces herself. Sabrina has mellowed somewhat since finally signing the Book of the Beast, but the mortal,  _emotional_ , side of her still clambers for control every so often.

"Auntie"

Zelda makes a point of finishing the article on non-centralised resistance. Oh how she wishes the Communists would have another revoloution. The last slew were positively delicious from what Mother said.

" _Auntie_ "

She folds the newspaper, and meets her niece's frown. The girl has obviously come directly from the Academy. Her red dress is a clever variation from the other Weird sisters. Sabrina always did inherit Zelda's flair for fashion and not Hilda's, _thank Satan_. She spends most nights except weekends there now. Zelda is still trying to decide why she isn't more thrilled about this.

"Is it true?" A little line has appeared between her dark eyebrows. Zelda recalls Hilda making a point to kiss it when Sabrina was still a child. She'd called it her Badger Frown or something equally ridiculous.

"Is what true?"

"You and _Father Blackwood_?"

"Who told you-"

"Oh sweet Satan" Sabrina's eyes well up for some unkown reason "It's true"

Zelda rolls her eyes, and lifts her newspaper back up. _What did she do to be stuck with a family of women like this_ \- With a hiss it catches on fire. She lets go of the two remaining halves and watches her interesting article turn to ash.

"Sabrina! Really!" 

"What's going on here?" Hilda, for once not dressed as a cheap Halloween costume has appeared in the kitchen "Why are you risking your life before breakfast poppet?" She asks Sabrina, depositing an easy kiss on her silvery head, and then moving to pop two pieces of bread in the toaster. 

She's wearing a turquoise wrap dress instead. Zelda wishes she still had her newspaper to hide behind. She takes a long drag of her cigarette instead.

"Aunt Zelda is marrying Blackwood!"

It's said with all the drama only a sixteen-year old who's recently pledged her soul to the Devil can muster. So a lot. Zelda clenches her teeth. 

"First of all young lady, it's  _Father_  Blackwood to you, and second of all I haven't said yes yet-"

There's a crash over by the toaster. 

Zelda and Sabrina both turn. Hilda is still facing away from them. The toaster is a smoking dinged heap at her feet. 

As if on cue, the child begins to cry upstairs. Zelda gets to her feet as quick as she gracefully can. Sabrina is still dumbstruck and Hilda hasn't turned around. She wants to be anywhere else on Earth. 

"If you'll both excuse me" 

She takes the steps two at a time even in heels. How  _dare_  they. For years they've been happy to let Zelda be the silly, uptight witch that cleaned up their messes. That protected them. But as soon as she takes any steps towards something she wants. Like the baby, or following the Dark Lord's commandments, or marrying someone who she doesn't despise- are either of them _happy_ for her-

The baby is a comforting weight in her arms, but this time she won't be so easily soothed. With the right spells, and a tricky bit of misdirection magic, perhaps she could raise the twins together without their father ever realising-

"Is it true?"

Hilda stands at the edge of their,  _no,_  her bedroom. The baby is still crying. Zelda blinks at her sister. She didn't hear her footsteps. It's been a while since she's been that unobservant. It might be the low light, but Hilda's eyes seem oddly ...bright. 

"I don't know yet" She touches her thumb to the child's contorted cheek, suddenly feeling overwhelmed by the results of all her choices this past month. She sits down heavily at the end of her bed. The baby's cries are too loud for her ears. _Quiet_. That was a thing she liked. All the conventional hellish wisdom advises never to shush children of the night by magic. It frightens them and can turn their own witchcraft inward. But Zelda's finger still pushes on the child's toothless cheek, and she wonders-

"Oh for hell's sake!" 

The child is lifted away from her, and Zelda raises her head in time to see Hilda settle her expertly in her arms. "Now who have we here?" Hilda sing-songs, and wonder of wonders, the baby stops. Zelda can see her frowning, scrunching her little soft face and trying to work out Hilda.  _Give me a shout when you do child_ , Zelda thinks ruefully,  _I've been at it a few centuries longer than you and I still don't know_.

"Zelda?"

Hilda's changed her hair she notes with distaste. She's curled it? And there was more black on her lashes than usual. There's something on her neck too. A bit of make-up? Strawberry jam? It certainly wouldn't be the first time but-

"What did you name her?"Hilda asks at the same moment as Zelda gasps "Are you seeing someone?"

They hang in the moment. Zelda hears the grandfather clock ticking downstairs. She sees the blush creep all the way to Hilda's hairline. It's answer enough.

"Who?"

Zelda feels like she's handling this well, like perhaps Hilda can't see that she's going to strangle the warlock on his own entrails. Hilda blanches visibly. She clutches the baby closer to her chest and shakes her head.

" _Who?_ " Zelda asks again, pleased at how level her voice remains, how she even manages to rise and prise the baby out of Hilda's arms. She settles the child in her bassinet. She waits. That is a thing she knows about Hilda. Whether it's listening to her sympathetic drivel to relatives of the deceased or watching her claw her way out of their graveyard. One has to be prepared to wait.

Finally Hilda answers in a thinly cheerful, yet determined tone "No one you know"

"Has he defiled you?"

No answer. And now Hilda won't meet her eye. The picture frames in the bedroom start to shake. Zelda sees the red creep up around her vision. She keeps staring at that red mark, wondering about the mouth that worried it there, who it was attached to, who thought they could just take her sister-

"Stop it" Hilda's magic pushes against her own. The frames stop shaking. She feels her sisters quieter magic soothe over her own sparks. How long has it felt this _mature_? Hilda's magic used to remind Zelda of fresh cream, and the thin membrane of birds eggs. Now there's an earthy quality to it. A musk almost. "What gives you the right Zelda? What gives you the right to interfere in my life when I've been your good little housewife these last sixteen years-"

Zelda steps closer to Hilda, using her height as an advantage. If only she were wearing her eight inch heels instead of six today. But Hilda breathes in sharply through her nose anyway. _She thinks I'm going to murder her_. For the first time she wonders if Hilda felt a little thrill everytime the blade fell. A little flutter in the pit of her stomach. Zelda had always written it off as indigestion, but perhaps there was something _intimate_ to killing the same body, time after time. Something earthy.

"My good little housewife?" She cups Hilda's face, angles it so she can't look away "When you desert me the second a better offer comes along?"

Hilda swallows. Her eyes are very blue. Her lashes are wet with tears.  _My love_ Zelda thinks and hovers there a moment.  _Do what thout will_ they were taught _,_ but this moment feels like a precipice she's lived next to for decades, and is finally stepping off. She's not sure hell awaits in the chasm below. She's not sure anything does.

It's Hilda that moves. That doesn't surprise Zelda. She's always been braver in her cheerful way. ' _Nothing to do but get on with it Zelds_ ' she'd quipped holding Sabrina's dirty nappy years ago. Her lips are dry, and she doesn't seem to know what to do once they've touched. She just brushes her lips over Zelda's. Once. Then twice. By the third time Zelda can't stand it any more. She angles her head slightly. She fastens their lips together more securely. She feels Hilda's hands come to rest lightly, so lightly, on her hips. She opens her own mouth and coaxes Hilda to do the same. 

She runs her tongue over Hilda's slightly fuller upper lip. She's wanted to do that for years. Murder had been a good way to rid her of this excess energy. Perhaps that's what she should have done now- instead of allowing whatever this is to change their relationship, the bedrock of their lives, for a brief spike of pleasure. Hilda takes a stuttering breath in, and it's all Zelda can do not to release her face and pull her closer when-

"Enough,  _enough_ " Hilda's voice is thin but firm. She steps out of Zelda's arms. "We are not doing this. I'm your sister. I won't be another one of your conquests Zelda."

Zelda's throat clogs with a million reasons, that this just isn't what this is- that Hilda is _more_ \- has been more for years, ever since she first magicked her bed next to Zelda's without being invited-

"I'm moving out"

Zelda takes her own step back. If a semi-trailer had passed through their bedroom and hit her along the way it wouldn't have shocked her like this.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner" Hilda to her credit does look genuinely guilty. "I've been thinking about it for a while actually. I need my own life. We both do."

She gestures vaguely to the sleeping baby behind Zelda. "I'm sorry I can't-" She seems to give up mid sentence. She bites her lips in the same fashion as she used to when she was a little girl. The same way she had when she'd caught Edward and Zelda in their game.

 _'I'm sorry too_ ' Zelda doesn't say to her retreating figure. ' _Come back_ ' she fails to wail after the rapidly descending footsteps.

Zelda listens to her leave their home. She's stepped off the precipice, and no one was there to catch her. How depressingly predictable.

 


	2. two

Hilda doesn't have second thoughts.

Or if she does, Zelda is certainly not privy to them. Hilda enlists Ambrose and that pouty-mouthed boyfriend of his to move her things out that very afternoon. Ambrose won't meet her eyes, but when she surreptitiously sniffs around his memories she sees a little apartment with a view on Main Street. She sees mismatched crockery, and ugly beige wallpaper. She sees Hilda toeing an malting shag carpet and sighing ' _It'll do'_ like she's just walked a thousand miles throughsixth circle, not been dropped off in Ambrose's newly acquired vintage Beetle.

Sabrina stays for dinner, wonder of wonders, even if she does spend most of her day holed up in her room, the faint smell of sulphur emanating from under the closed door. The girl is certainly giving Zelda a run for her money in mute rage. Out of the whole mess it's strangely sweet to hear the scrappy note in her voice when she argues with Ambrose over chicken pot pie about _what possible reason Auntie Hilda could have had for leaving Auntie Zhee like this_ and the much stranger _they belong together-they're my parents cousin_.

Zelda puts down her fork after three bites. The meat tastes like sour earth in her mouth, and more than anything she just wants this day to be over. She says as much to the children, feeling powerless to soothe the line the once again deepens between Sabrina's eyebrows. Even Ambrose has the grace to look apologetic. The flight of stairs takes forever today. 

The baby is awake and sucking on her blanket. Her dark eyes can't quite focus on Zelda yet, but Zelda can't shake the feeling that the little thing can see her quite clearly. A powerful child that one will be. She runs her finger along the soft baby hairs still plastered to her skull and supposes she'll have to call a family meeting soon. Go over the story. 

But not tonight. Tonight she lies down, not even bothering to take off her stockings or shoes. She closes her eyes. What was it that Hilda always said?

_It'll all be better tomorrow._

 

***

It's not better tomorrow. Or the day after that. Or the week after that.

But it does become bearable. It feels better to have a plan in place. They've all agreed on the story. The child is Ambrose's. A little indiscretion is hardly news among their kind. They take turns feeding the baby a mix of cows milk and goats blood. Hopefully human too if they get a likely cadaver in soon. The child needs strenghth. Even Sabrina spends some of her evenings with the babe in hand, reading aloud from her schoolbooks and making notes in a little red moleskin. 

They still haven't decided on a name. None of the options tossed out at the family meeting seemed right. Ambrose suggests a new one each time he happens on her in the house. Zelda thinks he's enjoying himself. _Good_ , she thinks, _at least someone is_.

Father Blackwood's proposal still hangs over her like a bad omen. She hasn't had word from him since, but she knows the minutes are ticking away. She wonders how he'd feel about raising Ambrose's bastard along with his precious heir. The thought doesn't fill her with gladness. She doesn't want this child to be a pauper to her brother. That's not why she risked all this.

She's begun taking the cat o' nine tails to herself in the evening again. She can usually eke out a little time after dinner. Ambrose has charge of the baby from sunset until midnight. She thinks he offered out of guilt, but that doesn't stop her from accepting.

The pain is good. It's pure and right and so very holy. Her mind is full of lots of things when she starts - Sabrina's unnerving new powers, the nameless baby, how it felt to crush her sister's skull with a shovel, the way it felt to touch her tongue to Hilda's teeth - but by the end she's just a conduit of pain. A vessel of the Dark Lord's will. She knows she ought to ask another witch to look at her back. To her questing fingers it's begun to feel uneven, like the rippled sand of a beach at low tide. Reopening wounds night after night is not sanitary and it's begun to throb hot and cold during the day. But who does she trust for that? Certainly not Ambrose or Sabrina. And Faustus would only want to join her and then fuck her.

No. There's no one.

***

It's groceries, of all the mundane mortal indigneties, that finally prompts her to run into Hilda.

There's a lot of errands around the house that have begun cropping up. The simple matter of spelling dinner they settled early on, but there's subtler, domestic tasks that Hilda used to perform, and Zelda never realised. She snaps her fingers for the coffee maker to start one morning and is rewarded by the smell of burning plastic. Sabrina complains that they've nearly run out of toilet paper. Ambrose nearly blows up the house when he attempts to hex his clothes clean.

"Alright" Zelda says, her back beginning to smart even though it's barely midday on a Sunday. "I'll handle it"

The Greendale local supermarket is a sub-level of limbo if Zelda has ever seen one. And she's seen a few. The fluorescent lighting, the cheery Americana music drifting through the speakers at half volume, the hordes of mortals, all moving with the same glazed half-purpose - well frankly it's enough to nearly turn Zelda around and take her chances with slaughtering neighbouring farm animals.

But Sabrina wants pop-tarts, and ice-tea and Zelda will be damned before she lets any mortal sphere stop her niece from continuing her lovely new habit of staying overnight again. She braces herself and steers a trolley into the fray.

She almost makes it too. She buys a bag of red apples, that smell sweetly even in climate control. She buys two loaves of bread, stone baked, like their nanny used to bring them from her family. A string bag of oranges. A vaccum-sealed headless fish. A box of crackers in a clear plastic container. Three bags of ground coffee. Sabrina's requested snacks with their garish labels. A glass bottle of milk for the baby. A round cheese with a white rind. 

She's just drifted into the tea aisle, proud of herself, proud and satisfied with herself for managing this so effortlessly, wondering how she was ever nervous, when she spots them.

Hilda is standing on the tips of her old winter boots, inspecting the rest of the pitiful Earl Grey selection the supermarket has to offer. She's wearing a dark red dress and her favourite hideous winter coat. A man stands behind her, hands resting on her hips and whispering in her ear. He nudges her cheek with his nose and she laughs- honking and familiar and dear- and Zelda is frozen. Hilda turns and swats the man's hands away, spotting her at the same time.

"Oh" Hilda seems at a loss "Hello"

Zelda won't dignify that with an answer. They've walked through hell together. They've raised a half-mortal teenage girl which amounts to the same thing. She begins to turn away.

"Hey!" The man strides forward, hand outstretched, and smiling. He's wearing a puffy winter coat. His hair is graying and the stench of mortal is cloyingly sweet around him. "You must be Zelda. I've seen you around" He clasps her hand with two of his "I'm Cerberus, but my friends call me Dr. Cee"

She pulls her hand out of his. The urge to eviscerate him is powerful. But it wouldn't do. Not in a supermarket.

"I'm not your friend" She manages, looking around for an escape, and finding none that doesn't involve bloody murder.

Hilda slips around Cerberus' front. She spreads a placating hand across his chest. Zelda watches this. Watches the way his hand automatically slips around her waist. _A murder in a supermarket would be hard to explain to the coven_  she reminds herself sternly.

"Hey now" Hilda says and Zelda knows this tone. It's the one she used whenever Sabrina had worked herself into a particularly spectacular tantrum. "Remember what I said about Zelda Cee?"

Ceberus' face clears as he looks down. "Doesn't like people" They both recite at the same time, Hilda smiling at him like he's a star pedigree dog who's just won them the Hellfire prize.

Zelda rolls her eyes and pushes her trolley past them. If she can just make it to the check out counters, she can begin scrubbing whatever that was from her brain-

"Zelda" A hand at her bicep detains her. Hilda's face arrests her. Were her eyes always so blue? Or did Zelda simply never get close enough to see the lovely web of crows feet around her sisters eyes, the welcoming curve of her lip, the blood pooling in her cheeks-

"You won't tell will you?"

"What?" Zelda manages thickly, too busy noting the way even this terrible light picks out the strands of gold in Hilda's hair. Her back feels warm. Maybe some of the fresher wounds have opened again, she's ruined a few blouses like that by now.

"About Cerberus" Hilda ducks closer and lowers her voice. Her breath is warm on Zelda's face "About him being a mortal" 

Something plummets in Zelda's stomach. It's similar to the weight that settled there when she realises she'd choose her sweet, stupid Sabrina over the Dark Lord a thousand times. For always. Maybe she's the worst devotee he has these days. "No, I won't"

Hilda relaxes a little. But she doesn't move to rejoin Cerberus, who is now whistling out of tune and rummaging through the neat stacks of green tea. 

"How have you been anyway?" The note of cheer rings false, but Zelda isn't quite willling to leave just yet. Hilda still holds her arm. "Have you named the baby yet?"

Zelda licks her lips and shakes her head. 

"Hilly! They have Strawberry Latte Green Tea!" Ceberus calls over his shoulder.

Hilda breaks eye contact and Zelda, feeling like she has some semblance of control back, uses this as her escape.

"Goodbye" Is all she can call vaguely over her shoulder, doing her best not to sprint away from them. She feels Hilda's eyes on her but resists the urge to turn around.

***

Monday brings an old dead man and Zelda is grateful for it.

She's begun dreading weekdays. Ambrose and Sabrina are both at the Academy until dusk. The house has a way of growing all around her in their abscence. She feels the silence of the empty rooms pressing in on her eardrums. She's taken to levitating the bassinet with her. But the baby is a quiet one outside meal times and the occassional burping. 

It's probably unproffesional to have a baby with her while embalming a man's body, but Zelda doesn't hold to mortal nonesense. If only the old codger's blood were a little cleaner, they'd have a nice snack out of it too. It'll still do for lesser ritual magic, but still dissappointing.

The family, three middle-aged daughters and a quiet older brother, had been nearly beside themselves. They all had families of their own, but they came together, as an old unit, to reminisce and cry together. If Hilda had been there she'd have known just what to say to make them feel better. Zelda offers them tea and nudges a box of tissues across her desk.

She takes her time sewing the man back together. She labels the organs carefully. The liver is done for, but the heart might be useful for a school project. Once she's added the last touches to his make-up she takes an appraising step back. The baby still sleeps in her blankets on the other side of him. Of her two professions, Zelda likes this smaller result better.

Smoking a cigarette on the deck and reading a smudged gazette from the outer fringes of Siberia takes her till lunch time. She's resettled the child back into her bedroom. She knows she'll fret at night if she keeps letting her sleep the whole day like this, but she can't imagine her current mood is beneficial for the child.

She's sitting there, lost in thought, when a Faustus Blackwood steps out of the house and sits next to her on the wicker couch.

She takes a long drag from her cigarette and waits. He reaches and slides his hand along the inside of her knee. Just as she opens her mouth to speak, Blackwood shakes his head. Zelda falls silent. His hand continues its path up her leg. He pushes under the thick wool of her dress. His fingers flutter at the edge of her underwear. It feels oddly light, not like his usual crude touches at all. Zelda cranes her neck and sure enough, there on the bannister, sits a little red-breasted sparrow.

"Astral projection Father?" She scoffs sitting up "I don't merit your physical prescence anymore?" She's surprised at her own rudeness. The Lord Satan could punish her for this insolence against his foremost servant on earth. _Then let him punish me_ she thinks, imagining all that demonic attention, and growing damper around Faustus' stilled fingers.

"Sister Zelda have you thought about my proposal?" He's not Faustus now. He's Father Blackwood, head of her church and spearhead of whatever male-centric cult he's so obviously building. The fingers withdraw.

"I, I haven't decided yet" 

Father Blackwood frowns. "My son needs you" He stands, gazing out over the Spellman cemetary plot. "It's a better offer than you're likely to ever get again Sister"

Then the bird flies, and he's gone.

Zelda shivers in the after draft of the enchantment, then stands, casting a critical eye over the over-grown gravestones.

"You can come out now" She yells after a moment.

There's a snap of twigs and Hilda emerges from a bush by the gate, her bright red face visible even from a distance. She walks very quickly to the house, embarrassment evident in every movement. "How'd you know I was there?"

"I always know when you're there" Zelda replies, sucking down the last of the smoke, and burning herself on the glowing ember of the cigarette. She coughs.

"What do you want?"

"Well I do still work here" Hilda says and there's that terribbly false note of cheer in her voice again "Thought I'd pull a shift"

"There's no work to be done" Zelda replies as coldly as she can. "Why don't you go back to your true calling of making overpriced coffees for dimwitted mortals" It doesn't satisfy her to see Hilda flinch. 

"But I heard old Mr Marsh died over the weekend- I know you hate emotional families and-"

"It's done" Now that worked. That shocked Hilda.

"Already?" Hilda's voice climbs a few octaves and Zelda looks up to her window despite herself. Silly. Of course the baby wouldn't hear. Hilda is digging her nails into her handbag. She's nervous. More nervous than Zelda's seen her for years. The urge to step down the porch and take her sisters hands washes over her without warning. 

"I'll call you for the next one" She has no intention of doing any such thing, but it seems to mollify Hilda. She relaxes her grip. She's eyeing Zelda now, no doubt working up to some inane platitude about death or the weather -

"Blackwood's still sniffing around I see"  She says just as Zelda interrupts with "Well I really must be getting on. Terribly busy you know"

Zelda turns away and walks into the house. She does not take in Hilda's slumped shoulders. She snaps her fingers and is rewarded with the low sound of the coffee maker beginning to brew in the kitchen. That should clear her head. Listening sharply behind her she's both relieved and horribly dissapointed when Hilda's footsteps don't follow her. 

***

She formally declines Father Blackwood's offer on Friday.

He comes home with Sabrina and Ambrose of all things, and the lurch in her stomach when she sees the three of them walking up the drive, not to mention the sour set of her niece's expression, confirms what she always knew she would have to say. It still wounds the little witch in her. The one that dreamt of being married to the High Priest of the Drak Lord one day. Even if he did have Edward's face.

He declines her offer to stay for dinner to everyone's relief. They're quiet at the table. Sabrina especially. Zelda keeps catching the tail-ends of sharp looks between the cousins. Finally she breaks. "Someone say what they have to say or I will hex dessert into the nether realm"

Ambrose clears his throat. "He won't, he won't make things difficult for you Auntie?" 

"I doubt that. Faustus has many other options. Satan knows- maybe one of these other witches will even give him another son." She's glad to be out of that firing line for sure.

"Auntie" Sabrina's voice is quiet, always a bad sign "Why didn't you and Aunt Hilda ever have children?" She tries not to get stuck on the _and_ instead of _or_. Like they belong together in her nieces eyes in all versions of their lives.

"Because we had you my love" She answers as honestly as she can. Sabrina knows reproduction is notoriously fraught among their kind. "And you were enough of a handful"

Sabrina doesn't smile upon the endearment, but something in her glows. Zelda makes a mental note to call her more pet names. Someone ought to pick up the slack now that Hilda wasn't here. Their girl might be the most powerful witch of her generation but she was still just that: their little girl.

"But before that" The frown is back. Zelda sighs and lowers her fork "You lived for centuries and you never-"

"I didn't want children" Zelda admits "I don't know about your Aunt Hilda, but I was quite content with my demonic balls, and ritual sacrifices" She takes Sabrina's hand. "But then we got you. And well" She looks at Ambrose, his eyebrows are raised and there's a slight smile playing around his mouth "It was perfect" She finishes anyway, feeling her cheeks redden.

Sabrina smiles truly now, a small curve of her lip that she tries to tuck into her chin, and Zelda feels her weak heart take another step away from the Dark Lord. She lets go of the girls hand, feeling vulnerable and strange, especially since Ambrose is still watching them both. She clears her throat and picks at the starchy mass on her plate some more.

"And what do you call this abomination anyway Ambrose?"

"Bangers and Mash Aunt"

Maybe she should have begged Hilda earlier today, or back at the supermarket, or best of all when this idea first crossed her little mind. If only to save them from their own cooking.

***

There's a five car pile-up over in Riverdale, and Zelda agrees to take some of the surplus bodies and prep them for their funeral home.

It's a good job, devoid of all the aspects she doesn't really enjoy (demanding families, tears, the stench of a crowd of living mortals in her house) but about half-way through the third body she begins to realise she's bitten off a bit more than she can chew.

"It's finals week for second form Auntie" Is all Ambrose will say when she asks him to help out. He's taken over the kitchen table with student papers to grade. He feeds the baby with a bottle in one hand, and barely looks up from all the pens skittering red notes across the essays. "You know I would- but I can't"

Sabrina shakes her head before she can even ask. "Why don't you ask Aunt Hilda?" She suggests, too innocently, around a bite of her pop-tart.

"Close your mouth while chewing dear" Is all she can think to say to that.

So here she is in the hallway of her own house, staring at their phone, with a number hastily scribbled by Ambrose on a bit of lined notebook paper.

Hilda picks up on the second ring. "Hello, Hilda Spellman's apartment, Hilda speaking!"

Zelda can almost picture her in her warm little flat, pleased as punch to be saying the words, probably half-way through some trashy mortal novel and a slice of whatever pie was on special at the bookshop. She'd like to see it she realises with a pang. She'd like to see what a space purely Hilda would look like. She thinks she would like it even if she'd have to pretend quite vehemently that she didn't. It would feel like home.

"It's me" She says after a moment "Zelda"

"Oh" There's a note in the exhalation that does something funny to her chest. It's like she's given her sister a gift. "Hi-Hello-how are-"

"I was wondering if you'd be available to help with bodies" She says, louder than she means to, because every half-breathed word seems to intensify the push in her chest "My bodies. Well not my body, but bodies from Riverdale" Babbling is the word. Zelda feels her face heat. "Work. I was wondering if you could work."

There's a silence that goes on so long Zelda almost thinks the connection has dropped. Then Hilda exhales.

 "I'll be there in half an hour"

***

For one glorious day Zelda feels content in her life again.

The baby is of course out of the ordinary, as is Hilda's lipstick and the waft of perfume Zelda catches whenever she hands her a tool, but everything else finally feels blessedly right.

They work in silence, the clatter of instruments and the sound of stitching the only noise for most of the morning. Once the baby gurgles, and begins a thin cry, but Zelda is there before she can work herself into a fit. Hilda stares at her oddly when she rocks the little thing and hums a nonesense melody she picked up from one of Ambroses' records, but otherwise they pass the day in peace.

She's almost dissappointed when the Riverdale morturary van takes away the five bodies. It's nearing dark and her and Hilda stand on the porch, both a little awkward.

"Sabrina will be home any minute" Zelda finally says, shooting a glance at her sister.

"Oh she's started coming home for tea again?" Hilda asks, seeming genuinely pleased by this revelation. Pride glows in Zelda's chest.

"She stays over most nights actually." She adds, unable to contain herself "We take turns cooking"

Something shifts in Hilda's expression and she doesn't seem so pleased anymore. Stomach doing a funny flop, Zelda takes a chance. "You're welcome to stay for dinner" She tries to sound disinterested "Sabrina would be thrilled"

"Oh you know I would" Guilt plays across Hilda's features. "But I've got a shift tonight"

Zelda nods tightly. Her face doesn't seem to be under her complete control. She takes a step back. The growing shadow of the porch should hide her features a bit. 

"But you should come to the shop for pudding" Hilda suddenly says, face lighting up "You and Sabrina! I make a mean Irish Coffee and I know Sabrina has a weak spot for the caramel apple pie"

Zelda knows she should say no. Sabrina has exams for one, and the idea of taking even one step inside _that man's_ shop-

"It's a date" She hears herself say. Hilda goes bright red and gives her a little half nod.

***

"So then Agatha- that total dimwit- decides it would be great if she just added a little powdered essence of toads blood-"

Sabrina's in enough of a mood to make the kitchen lights flicker. She cracks another egg into a mixing bowl, and Zelda distinctly sees shell pieces land in there this time. Agatha's incompetence seems to momentarily overwhelm her niece and she stirs the mixture with the energy befitting the stabbing of a mortal enemy. Then she dumps the contents into a clear round casserole dish. Just as it dawns on Zelda what her niece is planning, Sabrina points at the glass. 

The smell of burnt food fills the kitchen. There's fine cracks spanning the whole side of the glass. Sabrina takes a fork and cuts into what was meant to be their dinner.

"Okay so it's burnt outside but raw inside?" She looks up at Zelda, who feels the start of a headache at her temples. "We can still eat it I think?"

"We'll do no such thing Sabrina" She says, mentally striking Sabrina from the cooking roster for the forseeable future. She looks around the kitchen for inspiration, and comes up short. 

"I could try again" Sabrina says, obviously mistaking her silence for anger "Frittatas are like the easiest thing- even Har- even _mortals_ can make them-"

"Hilda's invited us for tea at the shop" Zelda says, watching her niece closely "It was only meant to be a nightcap, but perhaps.."

Sabrina goes very still. She sets down the fork. "Are you asking me if we can go for burgers at Doc Cee's? The place I've only been trying to get you to eat at since I was eleven?"

So that's how they end up in a sticky booth surrounded by tacky decorations, and more grease than she's comfortable with. Ambrose declined their invitation flat out, citing papers to mark, and baby sitting duties. "I'll just order a pizza" He'd said. Then he had the gall to wink at her.

Sabrina recommends at least five dishes that Zelda would never touch on a laminated menu. Her cheeks are red, and she more cheerful than she has in weeks. That at least is something. They still haven't seen Hilda, but Sabrina breezily assures her that's because she's probably at the coffee machine. In the end she tell a mortal dressed like a poor imitation of a zombie that she would like a steak, _rare_ , and a whiskey, _neat_. She doubts the meat will even be bloody, but Sabrina's ill-contained joy, after ordering a caramel milshake and something called a ' _triple layer veggie burger with extra curly fries_ ', makes it hard to worry.

"What do you think of this Dr Cerberus Sabrina?" She asks toying with a salt shaker, after their server has left.

"Dr Cee?" Sabrina frowns at her "Never really thought about him that much Auntie Z. He's a guy that wears a vampire costume for fun and makes good junk food?"

So Hilda hasn't told her. Zelda doesn't know why she even supposed she would. Sabrina's dissapproval would be all-encompassing. Or...perhaps not. A vision pops into Zelda's head unbidden. It's the three of them, Hilda, Sabrina and Cerberus, sitting in this booth, eating over-processed starches and laughing like idiots. Even the unlikely fantasy hurts something that feels suspiciously like her heart.

"You're here!" Hilda, resplendent in her awful Frankenstein costume has appeared at their table. She pulls Sabrina in for a tight hug. "Oh I've missed you poppet!"

She pulls back, holding Sabrina's face and studying her. "Haven't been getting into any trouble have you?"

Sabrina smiles weakly "You know me Auntie" She scoots over and pats the space next to her "Always putting my foot in it"

Hilda sits, keeping a hold of Sabrina's hand and tilts her head. "What was it this time bunny?" Zelda's sure only she can hear the real thread of worry in her sisters voice. It's hard to raise a child together and not learn every shade of your co-parents interregation techniques. No matter how they attempt to hide them with pet names and baby talk.

"I burnt our dinner" Sabrina admits, not as sheepishly as Zelda would like. "And undercooked it"

"It was quite an achievement" Zelda adds darkly. Hilda's eyes fall on her for the first time. Zelda wishes she had a cigarette. Or the baby. Anything to hide behind really.

She settles for just looking back at Hilda. It feels like a truce of sorts. There's a thin strip of perspiration edging along the hairline of Hilda's black wig. Zelda would like to follow it with her tongue. Taste the salt. She clenches her hands in her lap. Hilda swallows visibly, then turns back to Sabrina.

"And what else is new at school love?"

They pass dinner amiably. If Sabrina notices she's doing most of the talking she doesn't mention it. _Teenagers,_ Zelda thinks,  _at least there's some benefit to their endless narcissism_. Zelda's steak is dry and the accompanying salad wilted. She refuses fries when Sabrina tilts her plate in offering. The whiskey is decent at least. She wonders if there's anyone uncostumed to ask about the label. Somehow, her hopes aren't high.

Two plates with two half-eaten slices of pie, and one strong black coffee are on the table when Zelda spots him. He waves and begins to make his way over, cape and all. She supposes it had to happen sometime. Her back itches. She tries to count how many days it's been- _too many -_ she's been distracted.

"What have we here?" Cerberus' voice is a terrible mockery of Vlad's slavic accent "Three beautiful Spellman women!"

Hilda, to Zelda's great enjoyment, has stiffened. Sabrina looks confused more than anything. Zelda decides to be gracious.

"Good evening Cerberus" She refuses to call a man with no medical skills, or advanced university degree to speak of _Doctor_. "How are you this evening?"

He straightens and grins, dropping the accent for his real American twang. "Good good. Quiet night, no rowdy customers" He leans down to kiss the top of Hilda's head "Had a nice afternoon with my lovely girlfriend"

"With  _what_?" 

Sabrina's gaze seems stuck on the hand still resting on Hilda's shoulder. Cerberus looks confused. "No rowdy customers?" He repeats looking around as if Sabrina had seen something that condradicted this statement.

"I thought you were doing stocktake this evening Cee?" Hilda asks quietly, sliding out of the booth and gently shrugging out of his hold. Zelda takes another sip of coffee. Oh this was proving to be positively delicious. Across from her Sabrina was still doing a bang-on impression of a gaping fish.

"And I thought we talked about" Hilda's voice goes even quieter "About _me_ telling each of my family members when the time was right-"

" _Telling us what_?" Zelda recognises that tone anywhere. It's the sound of Sabrina gearing up to be rightous and so very, very mortal. It's surprisingly restful not to be on the receiving end. She holds her coffee to her chest, enjoying the way the cup warms her sternum, and trying not to smirk too obviously.

"Zelda-" Hilda begins, looking helplessly towards her. There's something tempting and familiar about sweeping in, telling Sabrina to _mind her manners_ , and returning to being the villain of the piece. But in the end Zelda just shrugs her shoulders. _I'm not here to defend you this time._ "Deal with your own mess for once in your life, _Hilly_. _"_

Hilda's face hardens. Zelda tells herself that this is right. This is for the best. For a moment she does feels a pang of worry, perhaps her words were too far, and Sabrina really has no right to use that tone-

"We've been seeing each other love" Hilda wraps both arms around herself, speaking as if Sabrina were still a little toddler up after bedtime "For a few weeks"

Sabrina opens her mouth to speak, but Hilda holds up a hand beseechingly. "I've been lonely little bug. I'm a person too you know, and it was hard-"

Sabrina stands up very suddenly. "Then you should have talked to each other" Her voice is thin, and Zelda recognises now is the time to interrupt because really this has gone too far. Sabrina knows nothing about them or how their relationship works. She makes to reach for her hand. Sabrina flinches back, stumbling backwards out of the booth.

"And you" She spits and Zelda braces herself, because when Sabrina decides to hurt her she always hits the mark "This is your fault. Why do you have to be such a _bitch_ all the time?" Zelda opens her mouth to defend herself when Sabrina goes in for the kill "Sometimes I wonder if you love us at all or if we're all just annoyances with the same last name to you."

It's so ridiculous and melodramatic that she would laugh if she could get around the lump in her throat. Of course she loves them, she'd die for all of them, she'd burn at the stake a thousand years for them, even Ambrose on the days he doesn't play his awful music-

She's still trying to formulate some of this into words, when Sabrina storms past her. The jingle of the shop bell is loud because of how hard she slams the door. There's a strained silence.

"So that went... badly?" Ceberus asks, eyes darting between her and Hilda.

"What? You think?" It surprises Zelda pleasantly that it's Hilda, not herself, who answers sharply.

Zelda rubs her face. Even the coffee isn't helping anymore. The day feels like an incredibly long one suddenly.

"I should go" She says.

"Yes. You should" Hilda answers tonelessly, already turning away from her. Zelda wishes she'd played the villain after all.

***

The house is empty, save for the low thump of Ambroses' music.  Sabrina's room is dark and her trunk is gone. She finds the child asleep in her room with a list of hastily scrawled names affixed to her front. Zelda sits down on her bed and allows herself to feel a tiny bit pathetic.

The leather feels warm in her hand. Rightous. She uses all her strenghth tonight. _Annoyances_. Flick. _I've been lonely_. Flick. _You should have talked to each other_. Flick. _Sometimes I wonder if you love us at all_.

Her back is numb and tingling by midnight. She doesn't bother to redress. The sheets will just have to be washed. Zelda has plenty of experience of getting blood out of fabric. Comes with the territory of being a woman and a witch.

She sleeps.


	3. three

Zelda dreams another version of the Batibat nightmare.

Hilda is cold against her clutching fingers. She keeps resurfacing, like a weak swimmer, drowning slowly, far from shore,in deep dark waters. She's clammy and overheated in turn. Her quilt has long since been kicked to bottom of her bed. There's goosebumps on her sweat-damp torso and then she's back in the dream, clasping Hilda's dear face, knowing that it's _not real_ , but unable to quell the waves of agony that wash over her. Unable to stop sobbing and wailing, and clutching at her sisters face, and arms, and hands. Oh how she wishes to sweet hell Sabrina would have had more sense than to release a demon in the house. But Sabrina and _good sense_ are two polar extremes in Zelda's experience. 

When she finally resurfaces for good, she's surprised by how much light there is in her room. The baby is whimpering softly. Her mouth is dry and her eyes feel crusty.

More worrying is how hot and swollen her back feels. Zelda sits up and winces. The sheets are a mess. Swipes of blood and clear liquid have dried like blooming flowers all over the undersheet. She rubs at her face, realising at the last minute that she didn't remove her make-up. Oh well. She has to focus harder than usual, but she manages a passable perking-up charm. Her head feels clearer at least. And her back has stopped throbbing.

She feeds the baby, looks over the money transfer the Riverdale Morturary sent, and cooks herself a pathetic late lunch of eggs on toast. The eggs taste fishy, and catch in her throat, and after a while she gives up and pushes the plate away. She doesn't want a cigarette, she can't seem to focus on any articles, and the silence in the house presses on her ear drums. She rests her head on the cool wood of the kitchen table for a long moment. 

Sabrina hasn't returned, and Zelda resists the urge to snoop through her messy room. She carries the baby through the house, discarding her shoes in the hallway. Her stockings will suffer, but Zelda doesn't trust her balance. She hadn't even managed to zip up her dress today, her back protesting at the slightest touch even through the numbing of the perking up charm.

There's a vague idea of checking for any salves Hilda left behind floating around Zelda's head. All that ends up happening is that she wanders from room to room of the house, rocking the baby all the while. The second story windows need cleaning. Hilda's spiders have been at work in the pantry, and they'll have to get rid of some of the dried herbs now enveloped in fragile webs. There's a spot on a landing wall that feels suspiciously damp, she'll have to see to that when she feels more up to it-

Her bed beckons. Zelda can't recall the last time she slept in the middle of the day. She resettles the child into the bassinet, then steps ungracefully out of her dress. Laying on her stomach is the only position that doesn't send sharp pricks of pain down to her legs. Now that she's still she's disturbed by how much the world is tilting around her. She licks her lips and begins to mumble another incantation. Another more powerful anti-nausea charm should do it, since she's obviously underestimated the severity of these wounds.

But when she reaches for her magic to perform the spell... it just isn't there. She reaches again but nothing. 

"Ambrose?" 

Nothing.

"Salem?"

Her voice sounds croaking to her own ear. She closes her eyes. Maybe just a little bit of sleep will help, and then she can get up, and get on with it, just like she always does. Zelda Spellman, the family matriarch without a family, the witch who doesn't need anybody, who nobody needs-

***

"Aunt Zelda?"

Ambrose's voice is faint. Not worth waking up for Zelda decides.

"Aunt Zelda" She wants to roll away from the noise. But she knows that will spell disaster for the warm center of her back. What gives the boy the right to shout in the house. Honestly. No manners the two of them.

"Shit. Shit, okay stay there, I'm getting help-"

 _Where would she go?_ The sound of Ambroses' footsteps gets quieter. Then there's silence again. The dark place beckons. Zelda goes.

***

 "- _I don't know_. I got home and I found her on the bed. She looks like thirteen higher demons got their claws in her"

Ambrose's voice gets closer again. Zelda wishes to hell he'd leave her alone. She can handle this. She just needs a bit more sleep and then she'll-

" _Oh Satan_ "

Hilda's voice is strangled, and Zelda relaxes because Hilda is _gone_ , gone with that mortal nitwit, so she must have dozed off again. Which is good. Which puts her one step closer to fixing this bloody mess herself. A cool fingertip moves her hair away from her nape. Her hair drags across her upper back. It stings. Zelda winces.

"What have you _done_ love?"

Zelda wouldn't dignify that with an answer if she could speak. This is a dream. Hilda is a dream. And Zelda has done nothing and everything.

Hilda's finger rests on the back of her neck for another moment. In any other context Zelda would treasure this. She loves having her neck kissed. She wonders if dream Hilda will be so kind. Above her Hilda exhales. "Ambrose, heat me some water, and bring me my suitcase, third largest one, the one with the daisies. And take the baby- she'll have to stay with you for a bit while I- I'll fix this right up."

Zelda watches the dark shapes blooming behind her eyelids. She remembers her and Edward had played healer and patient many times. Sometimes if she wheedled enough she could convince Hilda to join as a nurse. She always touched Zelda gently, even in the playacting. While Edward pretended to be curing her of the plague, or sawing off a limb, or splinting an arm with a flourish, Hilda would stroke her hand. It always did something to her stomach. To be touched like she was precious. Like she could be hurt.

This is like that she decides.

_Just like that._

As if she's read her mind Hilda's hand is back, this time palming her turned head, tracing the curve of her skull underneath, before tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. 

"Don't do this to me Zelda" Hilda hisses and Zelda is a little put-off my how pained her imagination has made her sister's voice sound "You do not get to do this to me"

She frowns into the palm that now cups her cheek, then with a titanic effort turns her head and brushes her lips along the edge of Hilda's pinky finger. Hilda doesn't know what she's talking about. She's not doing anything. She'd like to stay here forever. Then she fades again.

When she wakes next someone is rubbing something into her back. The room smells sharply of dried goldenrod and steamed calendula. When she cracks open one eyelid she sees Hilda's knitted mittens, and a jar of local honey on top of the leather-bound copy of the Satanic Verses she keeps on her nightstand. Even her little lamp hurts her eyes. She closes them again.

The slide feels very long this time.

The daylight hurts a little less. Raising herself on her hands takes effort, but Zelda grits her teeth, and is almost up on her forearms, when arms come around her and help her the rest of the way. "Careful love" Someone croaks next to her ear, and Zelda turns to find Hilda.

She looks worse than Zelda's ever seen her. And Zelda was there for her 80s crimped bangs and leg-warmers. Her eyes are puffy, her hair's a flattened mess, and her skin has a greyness that sends a pang of worry straight into Zelda's heart. They look at each other for a beat, and Zelda wants to ask _what happened to you?_ But what falls out instead is-

"Water"

Hilda's eyes fill with tears, but she nods almost violently, and abandons Zelda on the bed. She comes back with a pitcher and a glass. "Slowly" She says sternly, passing Zelda the glass. "Your system's still in shock"

Zelda does as she's told, watching Hilda over the rim of the glass. Her sister refills the glass, once, twice and then a third time. Then she takes the cup and the pitcher and puts them back on the little table.

Zelda follows her path and freezes. Her heart stops.

Hilda's bed is back.

Hilda turns and follows her gaze. 

"You're back home?" Zelda manages, traitorous hope swelling in every part of her chest.

"I had to sleep here. Ambrose watched over you for a few hours but- I didn't-I couldn't leave you-"

Zelda blinks. How long has she been out? Nervousness starts to settle over her, there's things to manage, like the business, her nameless baby, a tattered relationship with their niece-

"How could you Zelda?" Hilda doesn't sit back down. She stays standing and there's a note in her voice Zelda's never heard before. "How could you be so _irresponsible_? What would have happened if we hadn't found you in time? Blood poisoning is not a walk in the park- even for a witch of your calibre"

Zelda blinks. Her bladder is starting to protest. But this is important. Hilda is back, and Zelda has to keep her at all costs.

"I miscalculated" She hedges, wondering how did one start such a conversation. How does one say that their entire cup would be full if a bed with a handstitched quilt stayed next to theirs?

"You miscalculated" Hilda's voice is quiet, and despite herself, Zelda hunches her shoulders. "You hurt yourself" She takes a step forward "On purpose" Another step. "And it nearly killed you" Now Hilda's legs bump Zelda's knees. She looks up. Swallows.

"I didn't.." She begins again weakly. Hilda is warm. Her tangled hair frames her face. Some colour has started to return to her cheeks. She smells of bitter herbs. The urge to hug herself to Hilda's middle is powerful. But she wouldn't want that. Zelda jams her hands under her thighs. She's still in her stockings and underthings. Hilda's obviously removed her corset but her chemise hides little. 

"You could have died" Hilda's voice breaks. 

That does it. Zelda pushes herself up, cups Hilda's face and kisses her. She's frantic with it, half out of her mind, kissing Hilda not just on her mouth, but on her jaw, her cheek, her eyelids, her brow-

Hilda takes her head and forces her to slow down. Matches Zelda's panicked energy with slow, nearly chaste, kisses. Bears her down on the bed, and kisses her way down Zelda's throat right to the edge of her shift. Her ministrations are unbearably soft. Zelda tangles her fingers in Hilda's hair, not knowing if she's going to pull her up for another kiss-

Hilda looks up at her. She's crying in earnest now. Almost without thinking about it, Zelda parts her legs, so Hilda is resting between them. Her back smarts and her bladder is screaming at her but both can go to hell if she can just touch her lips to Hilda's forehead again, if she can just run her hands up and down her sides, too fast, but unable to slow down-

Hilda stumbles back. Zelda's chemise is rucked up near her hips from the way they've been laying together. She feels as if she could cry for the first time since she was a child. Hilda's chest rises and falls quickly.

"There's a fresh towel in the bathroom" Hilda finally says wiping her face and licking her lips "Don't get too much water on the dressing. We have to change them every four hours."

She seems on the verge of saying something else. But then she just swallows, gives a sharp nod and leaves. Zelda closes her legs slowly.

***

Hilda, true to her word, hunts her down on the hour, every four hours in the days following.

She's cancelled all her shifts at the shop for the week, and gets a lot of phone calls after dinner but hangs up very quickly everytime. Zelda overhears her assuring Ambrose that she'll be back to her regular schedule the following week, but "just feels better keeping an eye on things for a moment". Her bed stays in their room and more than once, Zelda wakes to find her sister touching her forehead in the middle of the night. She'd put a stop to this ridiculous nonesense, but it's as close to physical contact Hilda will come after their incident.

In all other aspects Hilda is forcibly cheerful. She catches up on Morturary paperwork with her usual cup of tea, makes lecherous observations over her latest romance novel, and wonders loudly and often if Sabrina will be home this weekend. They've never been the kind of sisters that don't talk if something is really bothering them, but that's what Hilda is loudly projecting.

Zelda will take it.

She'll take any scrap of Hilda she can get really. She stomachs the overbearring bandage changes, waiting for the brief minute where Hilda touches the bare skin between her sacrum and neck, then enduring the tedious half hour where she layers on healing spells. She attempts to broach the subject of " _what happened the other day_ " and " _when I woke up_ " but is met with stony deafness on both counts. She tries to enjoy the limbo. Hilda will return to Cerberus. But that doesn't have to ruin this week.

It's Thursday, and Zelda has finally, _finally_ begun getting some semblance of magic back. She's sitting on the front porch, wrapped in a blanket wordlessly handed to her by Ambrose on his way out, and reading a biweekly student rag from the Western Australian desert. The pages turn of their own accord, and Zelda uses her free hands to peel a hard-boiled egg and take occassional sips of coffee, just basking in the way it feels to have powers again.

Hilda is ensconed somewhere inside the house, baby in one hand, dust brush in the other. Apparently the spiders didn't particularly care to clean up their own messes. Zelda had offered to help, but both Hilda and Ambrose seem set on treating her like she's made of glass. At least Sabrina has no idea. Zelda will forever be thankful that it was the older of her charges who found her. She'd had a stern word with Ambrose about letting nothing slip. "You think I want to discuss bondage sex with Sabrina?" He'd laughed and Zelda knew him well enough to know that it was forced "Get real Aunt Zelda"

Ambrose's awful newly acquired American vernacular aside, something loosened in her chest at his words. For all her toughness and bravado, Sabrina was still so very _young_. Zelda can't recall ever being like that, especially not after the age of sixteen. Her niece's dark moods, her rightous causes and her many blunders are all branches of the same tree really. Innocence. Zelda's well aware that somewhere, in her secret heart of hearts, Sabrina still thinks her aunt invincible. She'd rather not shatter that image before she has to.

She's not really surprised to see the Dr Cerberus Bookshop delivery van pulling into the driveway. She lets the newspaper fold itself. She finishes her peeled egg in two bites. 

"Is Hilda around?" Ceberus asks without preamble, stepping out of the driver's door and craning his neck like Zelda's hiding his paramour under her blanket.

So that's the end of her allotted week of limbo then. Zelda doesn't sigh. She doesn't even cut the man's brake lines by magic. The useless pang will fade she tells herself. This is the person that Hilda is happy with. She's going to have to accept it sooner or later.

"She's inside" She unwraps herself, and begins to rise "Let me-"

The front door slams. Hilda is there, baby-less and duster-less, eyeing Zelda with concern. 

"Everything okay?"

Zelda frowns, trying to work out what in the seventh circle her sister is talking about now. Then it dawns on her.

"You put a watchers sigil in the blanket" 

She is going to kill Ambrose after she has a long word to him abot every witche's right to her own privacy. Hilda at least has the grace to look guilty. In days past this would have been enough for a half-day vacation in the Cain pit. Zelda wonders if she'll ever manage to kill Hilda again. Probably not after this mess.

"You'd never tell me if you were actually in pain" The guilt has passed like a cloud over the sun. Now Hilda just looks angry "I had to make sure _somehow_ "

"Hilda" 

They both start. Zelda looks down. Cerberus. Of course. The mortal fast-food mogul who is now part of every other conversation she has with her sister.

Hilda doesn't look like someone who's seen their one true love- she looks like-

"Please can we talk about it?"

The whining note is unappealing in a man, Zelda turns to tell Hilda so, and stops. Hilda, looking guilter than ever, is chewing on her lip. She shakes her head.

"No Cee. I don't think we can. I'm sorry"

"But it's just-"

"Will there be a problem with my shift next week?" Hilda wraps her lavender cardigan closer around herself "It's okay if there is Cee."

Cerberus sighs, and something unspoken seems to pass between them. Something Zelda is outside of "No, come in at ten"

He gets in his car without saying goodbye to either of them. Zelda watches the van turn the corner out of sight.

Shoulders sloping more than Zelda is comfortable with, Hilda releases her sleeves, and turns to go back into the house.

Zelda is frozen to the spot. Her heart beats loudly in her chest. All her senses seem very clear. She can smell the mud overturned by Cerberus' car tyres. She can see the paint flaking off their house. A crow cawing in the distance is what finally snaps her into movement.

Hilda hasn't gotten far. She's regarding herself in the hallway mirror. She doesn't seem pleased with what she sees.

"What happened?"

Zelda keeps her voice very even. She feels as if some great weight has toppled off the edge of her reality.

Hilda turns absentmindedly. "We broke up" She turns back to her reflection "On Tuesday"

Red around the edges of her vision "Did he do something- Hilda _did he hurt you_?" Then her brain catches up "Tuesday?"

Giving her hair one last press, Hilda rolls her eyes and turns to face Zelda. The line in between her brows is back, the same one Sabrina had, the same one Zelda's seen on her own face once or twice-

"No he didn't hurt me you nitwit. And yes. Tuesday. It just- it wasn't going to work was it?"

Zelda tries to process this. It doesn't line up with what she's spent the last two days telling herself. That Cerberus was it for Hilda. That she deserved some joy in life as well. That one day he would die, and Zelda would be waiting- would be ready and better-

"So when you found me-"

Hilda sighs "When I found you, half-dead I may add, I'd just packed all my earthly possessions up, and was trying to think how to ask you if I could live with you again."

Zelda holds herself very still. She could ruin this moment by saying the wrong thing now. She's good at that. Give her something perfect and she'll put her fingerprints all over it. What Edward would say if he could see Sabrina for instance-

"And now?" She ventures after a small eternity.

Hilda chews on her lip. Her eyes are very blue today. Zelda would very much like to kiss her.

"Now things can go back to normal" Hilda finally says "You can stop... you know, and we'll name that baby, and patch things up with Sabrina, and everything will be like it was"

It's a good offer. The best Zelda is probably ever going to get no matter what Blackwood thinks. A house where Hilda's overly vegetarian cooking dominates dinner again, where they sit together and read at night, where they have not one, but two girls to their name now. A warm home.

She wants more.

Hilda's still waiting for her answer. She knows she's been quiet for too long because Hilda falters and blinks. "Unless you don't want that"

Zelda takes a step forward. She cups Hilda's face. Gives her plenty of time to escape. Her pupils are big and dark. Zelda leans in.

She tries to put a lot into the kiss. She tries to convey that she knows how to be gentle. She promises Hilda fidelity, protection and faithfullness with her lips. She pulls back, and it hurts more than pulling out a fingernail. "I love you" She says, careful to ennunciate every word very carefully so Hilda understands. Understands that Zelda wants it, wants it a lot, doesn't even know how to be a witch without her sister to balance her. And also understands why she can't be like Hilda and Sabrina, an open book, every emotion on display as soon as it is felt.

Hilda blinks a moment.

Then she surges forward. She presses Zelda up against the wall of the hallway. Zelda hears the faint ring of the hallway mirror shifting, sees out of the corner of her eye that they've knocked a few frames crooked. But none of that matters. What matters is Hilda, frantically tearing at the buttons on the front of her dress. What matters is Hilda kissing the skin she exposes, at the same time fumbling a hand up to cup her left breast, then to pinch her nipple, hard, almost as if in punishment. Zelda tries to reciprocate, tries to open Hilda's cardigan, but Hilda takes a hold of her wrists and stops her. "No" she hisses. Then she fastens her lips on Zelda's neck, and pain blooms there, she thinks she feels the edge of teeth.

Her knees don't seem to be doing a great deal to support her suddenly.

Hilda follows her down to the carpeted floor of the hallway. She shoves Zeldas dress and chemise further down her hips. The carpet is scratchy against all the parts of her back not covered in bandages. Hilda has straddled her hips. She realises with a shock that she's half-naked whereas Hilda has only lost her lipstick. Her nipples are furled and tight. Hilda stares at her chest, licking her lips.

Zelda swallows thickly. "You're going to fuck me here for the first time? In the hallway?"

Hilda snarls, and in a flash they're upstairs in Zelda's bed, Hilda's ass still hovering over Zelda's hips. 

"Teleportation?" Zelda asks, using this chance to reach up and run her index finger along Hilda's fleshy lower lip "How very 1999 of you my love"

At this Hilda snorts. The honking one that Zelda likes best. She leans down to kiss her, still grinning. 

Zelda pushes her tongue past Hilda's teeth. The laughter stops. Hilda's tongue touches her own. It jolts something pleasant and dark in Zelda's brain. She tilts her hips up. Opens her legs.

Hilda must take the hint, because she pulls the garments the rest of the way off, still kissing Zelda, the stockings follow and her little strip of underwear straight after. Hilda's hand is cool against her hip. Her fingers tip-toe across the skin of Zelda's stomach, down over the hair, and Zelda resists the urge to grap her hand and just shove it where she needs it, because Hilda's eyes have gone so wide and it's obvious she needs to do this slowly, get used to the water so to speak-

A finger glides into her. 

It's hardly anything. She'd laugh if any other witch began so modestly. But something contracts in her and Zelda takes a sharp breath in. "More" She manages.

Hilda's stopped kissing her, stopped doing anything but staring at her and holding a single finger inside her. Zelda sees her throat work. She adds another finger. Zelda whines. It's good, but not enough. She wants it to burn. She wants to be unable to walk after this. " _More_ " she whines throwing her head back. She opens her legs wider. Feels a messy kiss at her throat.

Then Hilda withdraws her fingers, and re-enters her. Hard. Zelda groans, angling her hips up, and feels again the edge of teeth. They find a rhythm and Zelda clasps her hands around Hilda's hips, feeling her other hand fumbling with her skirt-

"Are you-" she begins. "Uh-huh" Hilda mumbles against her throat, and Zelda can feel it from the way they're pressed together, Hilda driving her fingers into Zelda, but also chasing her own pleasure with the same rhythm. She clasps her legs loosely around the back of Hilda's thighs and something about that, the angle, or the way Hilda breathes harshly on to her throat, is what does it and she feels her back arch, little lights going off behind her eyelids-

She pulls Hilda in for a searing kiss once she's done and uses the leverage of her legs to flip them. Hilda removes her fingers. They're obscenely wet. Zelda leans down to kiss her again, feels the wet hand cup her cheek, then wander over to the corner of her mouth-

It does something to Hilda to watch her swallow her fingers to the last knuckle. She makes a mental note of that. Maybe with a bit of magic they could try a few other things-

Hilda is however still wearing all her clothes. This is absoloutley unacceptable. She releases the fingers with a pop, then makes short work of ripping open Hilda's blouse. "Hey!" She squeaks, covering her breasts, even in her current state. Zelda rolls her eyes. "It's a hideous blouse. I'm doing you a favour"

But with her hand on Hilda's sternum something settles in her. She leans down again and kisses her mouth.

Hilda is still tense under her. She says something against Zelda’s mouth. “Are you and Blackwood still-“

”No” She punctuates the word with another kiss. A really good one. Hilda’s eyes are glassy and her mouth just keeps on pulling Zelda back. “No” she says again, and wonders how she could have ever considered it. 

She strokes Hilda’s face. Pets her hair. Tries to say 'I love you' with every touch.

 _Of course_ Hilda likes things slow and gentle. Makes perfect sense. Zelda can do that. She can do long kisses. She can run her fingers teasingly up the inside of Hilda's thigh. She can slip a knee in between her legs and let her sister rub against it. It's even better once she cups her ass and pushes her to a more deliberate rhythm. She feels the warmth and the muscles contracting even before Hilda breathes "Oh. Oh! _Ohhh_!" into her ear. 

She kisses her one more time. Like promise. Like a seal.

***

They fall asleep after. They wake up in the late afternoon, and Zelda takes great pleasure in finally uncovering skin, so much lovely rosy skin, and would have made a good go at kissing every single inch of it, if Hilda, sweaty and on her third ( _fourth?_ ) orgasm says that maybe they should eat something, and feed the baby, and Zelda agrees theoretically, but in practice all she wants to do is keep kissing her mouth, and whispering soft words that she would never say outside this bed, but that just seem to keep tumbling out of her-

The door slamming is what wakes them next. And Sabrina's voice calling-

"Aunties? AUNTIES?"

Zelda sighs from her spot tucked into Hilda's neck, and begins the tedious business of casting a charm to make herself presentable. She ignores Hilda's muffled squeak, and subsequent worried mumbling.

"I know you're there! Ambrose told me _everything_!"

Their eyes meet over the messy bed with its tell-tale stains. Hilda goes beet red. 

"If you don't want me to eat at Dr Cee's anymore I won't Auntie Hilda, but I need your help!"

Sabrina stands in the entrance hall when they come downstairs ten minutes later, with not a hair out of place. She's holding an Assyrian dagger, something that looks suspiciously like an Egyptian _Book of Souls_ and a whole human hand. Hilda steps past her, and goes over her usual routine of checking their niece for any grievous wounds. Sabrina meets Zelda's eyes over her head. The little line is back.

"I think I messed up" 

Zelda squares her shoulders and resists the wild urge to laugh. Only Sabrina. Only this family.


End file.
